Last week we went through the nuts and bolts of deck construction, finishing with a list for my current EDH deck. The problem is that my current deck has already gone through the evolutionary process from budget fun to fully powered monstrosity. I’d like to take a different approach this week, which is building a budget mono-black EDH deck.

I decided on black as the color for our budget deck for a few reasons. First, black has a lot of universal effects (Damnation, Mutilate, Infest, Syphon Mind, etc) that don’t require us digging in to a second color. Remember, EDH is a casual format and while really lowering the hammer on one person (in our playgroup my personal anvil is Todd "Woody" Palmer), you also want to be spreading the wealth to others (like Matt "Jesse the Yodeling Cowgirl" Williams).

Black also allows us the ability to generate quick effective mana through Cabal Coffers without the expensive price tag associated with the usual extra mana producing lands. While I have a great respect for Tolarian Academy and Gaea's Cradle they’re a little more fragile than Cabal Coffers and a great deal more expensive. Serra's Sanctum has the same unfortunate issue, enchantments are relatively easy to get rid of, and the land itself is probably a little harder to find.

Finally, black gives us access to mounds of creature removal and hand control. Though we do sacrifice being able to deal with artifacts and enchantments, hopefully our use of colorless answers (Oblivion Stone and Nevy’s Disk) should shore up that problem to some extent.

As noted last week, the first thing we need to do is look for a General. The general is going to shape the theme of our deck and we’re going to select the supporting cards accordingly. Glancing at a list of black legendary creatures we have a few who really jump out at us.

First, no matter how neat they seemed I eliminated creatures from the Portal expansions and the Starter set, unless they had been reprinted in an easily accessible set. The goal of this deck is to be budget-ish, or at least easy enough to acquire locally. On to our choices!

The first choice we need to make is what kind of deck we want to have so we can help pick a suitable general. I personally prefer a control deck. In my opinion we can’t find enough small beaters to make an aggro deck work for us and mono colored aggression doesn’t seem like the optimal idea for a multi-player format. Remember also that you need to dodge the removal of 3-4 players, something that is pretty difficult most of the time.

Knowing that we have a control deck in mind we need to find a general. There are a few good candidates for us to take a look at, starting with Ascendent Evincar. I must say that the Evincar has a pretty saucy ability and can be a real beating for token decks. One thing that concerns me though is that any sort of pump effect overwhelms the static ability and paints a big target on our head for being an annoyance. So Evincar is out, we turn to the next in line Chainer, Dementia Master.

Chainer has more than a few things going for him. He pumps nightmares, which is kind of neat if we go that route. Even better, he allows us to reanimate things, and not just from our graveyard. For the fairly low price of three black mana and three life we can take anything and make it a nightmare (pumped up for that matter!). Better yet, when Chainer leaves play nightmares get exiled, stopping any graveyard shenanigans. Chainer has definite potential but we’re young, why commit so early? Let’s see what else black has to offer.

I’m a fan of Mutilate type effects. The ability to kill untargetable creatures and the odd creature who has somehow managed to gain indestructibility is a big boon. To have a general that offers a mutilate type effect is powerful, particularly when we consider the ability to play the general repeatedly. With that in mind Kagemaro, First to Suffer is a very tempting choice. He is large enough early on to wipe the board but late game can have a problem if we don’t keep a full hand. There are definite strong arguments on both sides of Kagemaro, so we’ll toss him in the maybe pile.

That leaves two very tempting legends, Maga, Traitor to Mortals and Myojin of Night’s Reach. Both have something special the others did not have, each time you cast them you can gain an immediate advantage, and better yet, when the opponents remove them it just doesn’t matter that much. Myojin allows you to empty the hands of everyone at the table, and to do it again when someone finds an answer for him.

Maga, on the other hand is pure power (relish that remark, outside of EDH you might never hear it again). He enters play and just drains someone for as much mana as you can produce, which in our case should be a significant amount. Even better, if your opponent does manage to remove Maga then you can do it all again, probably eliminating a player along the way. I also give a slight advantage to Maga in terms of sheer size. Maga is generally going to be larger than the Myojin, even if they will still have a hand at the time. Luckily for us black also gives us plenty of ways to make players discard, so that whole hand issue shouldn’t be a problem. I think we’ve found our general, now we just need to support him.

There are a few generals I did not mention earlier for a specific reason (if you should want to use them here’s the reason I did not). Kokusho, the Evening Star is a very powerful creature and one of my favorite cards of all time. That being said, his drain life ability triggers on going to the graveyard. If you want Kokusho to go to the command zone instead he will never hit the graveyard and as such his ability will never trigger. There are certainly ways around this (Zombify, Reanimate, etc), but I didn’t want to take the deck in that direction. Braids is also a popular choice, but the official EDH rules committee on Olympus has decreed that she should be banned as a general and we are going to respect that.

Rather than write a comprehensive list of all hundred cards I’d like to focus on the few more expensive cards and the new additions Zendikar brings to the table. For intents and purposes of the article I have defined budget to be anything under three dollars when searching online.

Maga is mana hungry, and while Cabal Coffers offers us a good way to sate that hunger we definitely have some more work to do. If your deck is going to revolve around Cabal Coffers then we need multiple ways to both find and protect our lands.

Black is rife with good tutor effects, so the real difficult thing is actually paring the number down to an acceptable amount. Expedition Map is a great place to start. Cheap, both in mana and money, Expedition Map gives us great utility in finding Cabal Coffers and any of the other non-basic lands we should end up running.

Demonic Tutor is a similar addition. A few people question Demonic Tutor as a budget card, but I believe with the wide availability due to multiple printings and the amazing splashability for other decks Demonic Tutor is a sound investment.

Crucible of Worlds is also going to have to make the cut. Crucible has the same price drawback as Demonic Tutor, but allows us to play our lands after they’ve been destroyed, a big plus since we absolutely must have cabal coffers stay on the battlefield. Additionally, should a card like Strip Mine end up in our final hundred we get some very pleasant recursion.

The final of the less budget type tutors is Liliana Vess. I count Vess as a sort of Vampiric Tutor replacement, with a little bit of Urza’s Armor mixed in. If Liliana allows you to tutor once (which she should), and then promptly eats a fireball/attacker then she’s done her job plus some. The fact that she gives the potential for a devastating late game makes her worth the initial cost investment.

With regards to acceleration I did not find anything we could really add from Zendikar, and there is only one item pushing the three dollar mark, which is Solemn Simulacrum. Solemn (or Jens as he’s commonly called), is an EDH mainstay, he fixes your mana in any deck you can build and draws you a card when put into the graveyard. Let Jens dive under the bus for you!

Next we come to removal. Nevinyrral's Disk really surprised me when I looked and was unable to find it for cheaper than three dollars. Unfortunately black has approximately zero answers for enchantments outside of Disk so I think we need to include it. As with Solemn, Disk also makes the grade in pretty much every deck possible, so there is some consolation in knowing we will be going back to it in future EDH decks.

Black wouldn’t be black without mass removal. Fortunately for us mass removal in black is relatively cheap with two exceptions Damnation and Mutilate. Mutilate (after much searching) clocked in at most places with a price just slightly over three dollars, enough to fall into not so budget status. Mutilate is actually sometimes better than damnation in its ability to get rid of indestructible creatures. Remember that creatures with zero toughness are put into the graveyard as a state-based action, not destroyed! No regeneration need apply.

Damnation is probably the most expensive card in the deck for a reason. Damnation wipes the board and lets us all start over for a manageable four mana. Wrath of God has been a mainstay in white decks since alpha and there’s no reason for damnation to be any different for black decks. Fortunately for us Damnation has been printed in a very popular textless form, bringing the other versions down in price to a more manageable level.

What would EDH be if not for some general miscellany? While focus is important we also need to have some fun. Lucky for me fun cards are usually pretty cheap. There are a few exceptions that are just too fun not to include (but lucky for us they’re not too expensive either).

Mind Twist is our first general miscellany card and it becomes a lot of fun late game. Mind Twist is spread around when we have copy effects in play, particularly Mirari. Mind Twist also baits counterspells (a four letter word in EDH) and can clear the way for important late game cards.

Next we run into a pair of fun artifacts, Mindslaver and Helm of Obedience. Mindslaver is arguably a fun card. It can be challenging to play your opponents cards as poorly as possible, or at least as beneficial to you as possible. It’s also worth noting that if you use a Mindslaver to kill another player you generally get some pretty big props from the table, not to mention points for the kill (if you’re playing in a points based league).

The other artifact on our not so budget list is Helm of Obedience, possibly my favorite card in EDH. Cabal Coffers generates a ton of mana and what better to do than try to mill your opponent for a ton of cards? Part of the reason Helm is so much fun is you also get something out of it. There’s nothing quite as fun as getting your opponent’s biggest creature essentially for free! Just remember that if you take someone else’s creature you’re bound to attack them with it, it’s the unwritten rule!

Our last miscellany card is Ink Eyes, Servant of Oni. Ink Eyes is one saucy rat, helpfully returning your Jens or even better a Duplicant, all at tricky speed and in return grabbing your opponent’s most fun creature for your team. I should also note that Ink Eyes regenerates allowing her live through Disk, Day of Judgement, and Oblivion Stone, all common cards for EDH.

The land base has two rather ironic non-budget cards with one honorable mention. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Cabal Coffers are both slightly more than three dollars, forcing us to mention them here, but I think we can justify their inclusion since they’re going to fuel our budget deck.

My original decklist contained Volrath's Stronghold and then I looked at the price tag! The Stronghold is tipping the scales at a mighty 8-10 dollars, too much for a land that we might not need. I’ve opted to replace the Stronghold with Unholy Grotto. Though the Grotto only returns zombies it does so for approximately five dollars less, which fits much better in our budget theme.

Without further ado, this is the budget list I’ve been working on:

[deck title="EDH - Maga, Traitor of Mortals" author="Ben McDole" align="center"]

General

1 Maga, Traitor to Mortals

Main deck

1 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni

1 Helm of Obedience

1 Mindslaver

1 Mind Twist

1 Eternity Vessel

1 Sanguine Bond

1 Beacon of Unrest

1 Mirari

1 Myojin of Night’s Reach

1 Mind Shatter

1 Chainer, Dementia Master

1 Puppeteer Clique

1 Promise of Power

1 Undead Gladiator

1 Phyrexian Arena

1 Wound Reflection

1 Nightmare Incursion

1 Neverending Torment

1 Whetwheel

1 Polluted Bonds

1 Helldozer

1 Syphon Mind

1 Sign in Blood

1 Relic of Progenitus

1 Mind Sludge

1 Tower of Murmurs

1 Mutilate

1 Damnation

1 Hero’s Demise

1 Tendrils of Corruption

1 Decree of Pain

1 Duplicant

1 Death Cloud

1 Oblivion Stone

1 Neverinyrral’s Disk

1 Bane of the Living

1 Consume Spirit

1 Corrupt

1 Barter in Blood

1 Innocent B lood

1 Reiver Demon

1 Infest

1 Altar of Shadows

1 Magus of the Coffers

1 Solemn Simulacrum

1 Coalition Relic

1 Extraplanar Lens

1 Gauntlet of Power

1 Prismatic Lens

1 Mind Stone

1 Coldsteel Heart

1 Liliana Vess

1 Crucible of Worlds

1 Expedition Map

1 Journeyer’s Kite

1 Demonic Tutor

1 Beseech the Queen

1 Diabolic Tutor

1 Demonic Collusion

1 Planar Portal

1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

1 Cabal Coffers

1 Shizo, Death’s Storehouse

1 Temple of the False God

1 Vesuva

1 Unholy Grotto

1 Urza’s Factory

32 Swamp[/deck]

Here are a few quick notes on potential changes if you wanted to add a few more expensive cards. Sensei’s Divining Top would be a fantastic addition to help smooth out early drawing issues. If Top is a good addition then the same can of course be said for Scroll Rack. Night’s Whisper is another excellent card drawing spell that would be in the list if I had been able to locate a copy.

There are also a few higher end cards that could be added to this deck which would improve different aspects. Vampiric Tutor is a fine addition to our suite of tutors, as is Cruel Tutor. I’ll briefly mention Grim Tutor in case it has been forgotten, though I certainly wouldn’t advocate spending over a hundred dollars on a single tutor effect for a deck already chock full of tutory goodness.

Maybe I’m just being a little silly, and it might be the Crown Royal but I don’t think we need Sol Ring. There are plenty of good mana accelerants already and most of our spells require a heavy black/swamp commitment anyway.

Next week I plan on going through a couple of practice games with the deck and of course some more tweaking and testing. If you have any suggestions or questions I invite you to contact me, or even better post in the forums/comments so we can all share ideas. If you happen to be going to the PTQ in Tallahassee this Saturday I’ll be head judging so feel free to come up and say hi.